Looking Past the Web to See the Garden: An Exploration of Epistemological Metaphors

In their paper Identity, Oppression, and Power: Feminism and Intersectionality Theory, Samuels and Ross-Sheriff present those who engage with intersectionality with three challenges: avoid essentializing any one expression of identity (race, sexual orientation, class) over another, acknowledge interconnected privileges as well as oppressions, and pay mind to the changes in context that shift the designation of social identity and status. These challenges serve as an unpacking of the more general definition and purpose of intersectionality that “proposes that gender cannot be used as a single analytic frame without also exploring how issues of race, migration status, history, and social class, in particular, come to bear on one’s experience as a woman.” In this paper, dissatisfaction with intersectionality is taken to be a symptom of an insufficient epistemological picture. I very briefly touch on the epistemological setting offered to us by Descartes and move on to examine that provided by Quine at somewhat greater length and show how neither offers us sufficient tools to interact with people in a manner that would satisfy the intersectionalist. I then present a metaphor that I suggest our epistemology would need to grow out of for us to sufficiently deal with intersectionality

Intelligence Gap: Advanced Military Technology and Law of War Compliance

Many states justify their use of technology and tactics as consistent with international law. These appeals to legitimacy suggest that legal norms serve some role in limiting the use of force, particularly in promoting discrimination between combatants and civilians. The United States justifies drone attacks as more efficient means than the use of troops to attack suspected terrorists. Many civilian and military leaders argue that these attacks are more moral than alternative tactics because they target the individuals directly responsible for attacks on the United States and its allies. However, these justifications assume that the military has accurate intelligence. However, in Afghanistan, the military has killed many civilians in misdirected attacks. Why do civilian and military leaders contend that they have accurate intelligence when the empirical record shows that often information is erroneous and leads to unnecessary destruction and civilian casualties? To answer this question, I will focus on the U.S. use of drone attacks in Afghanistan. I will first evaluate civilian and military leaders’ justification of the use of targeted killings. What are their public justifications? I hypothesize that arguments based on efficiency and morality presume that civilian and government authorities have good intelligence about their targets and their participation in terrorist acts. Then, I examine this assumption and test the reliability of this evidence. I suspect, as Richard Betts has long argued, that intelligence failures are inevitable, and that intelligence is always going to have a margin of error. Finally, I ask how states have calculated the benefits of a policy of drone attacks in light of the costs of seemingly indiscriminate damage and non-combatant deaths. Is the policy of drone attacks really as moral and efficient as its proponents argue? I suspect that this tactic does lead to a short-term decrease in violence, but in the long run increases antagonism and anti-American violence

The Other Forgotten War: Understanding Atrocities during the Malayan Emergency

In this chapter, I briefly outline the dependent variable in this case, the various units actively engaged in combat in Malaya between 1948 and 1952. I then explore the most common explanations for the Scots Guards’ actions and reveal why they are not helpful in explaining why other units did not similarly kill civilians. To better understand this variation, I explore three alternative explanations: Did the military socialize units in the laws of war and appropriate behavior toward civilians? Did government leaders encourage units to kill civilians? Finally, did different units’ subcultures make them more likely to kill civilians? I find that while the British military and senior leaders did not adequately socialize units to accept the laws of war, some junior leaders were able to discipline their units and prevent participation in war crimes. Some junior leaders, however, refused to enforce organizational norms and supported a countercultural subculture that resisted tactical innovation and may have contributed to the unit’s participation in war crimes

The Dark Side of the Band of Brothers: Explaining Unit Participation in War Crimes

On July 25, 1950, an American infantry unit killed a large number of refugees near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri. On December 12, 1948, a British patrol killed twenty-five civilians near the Malayan village of Batang Kali. On March 16, 1993, members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment beat a Somali teenager to death. While each of these events is horrific, they also represent only one side of the story; many units in these conflicts, facing similar threats, did not kill civilians. This variation raises a critical question: why do some units participate in war crimes while others do not? To answer this question, I tested three explanations: socialization in the laws of war, civilian influence, and unit subcultures. First, I examined the military\u27s training and enforcement of the laws of war to test whether socialization could explain this variation. Second, I analyzed the influence of civilian leaders. If they exaggerate the importance of a conflict or dehumanize the enemy, units may be more likely to participate in war crimes. Third, I examined the role of unit subcultures. Units may develop beliefs that challenge organizational norms and encourage participation in war crimes. I tested these arguments in case studies of the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, and the Canadian peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Each conflict provides variation in outcomes: some military units complied with the laws of war and others did not. Based on extensive archival research, I reached three conclusions. First, while the American, British and Canadian militaries as institutions inadequately trained soldiers in the laws of war, junior leaders could compensate and insure compliance with international law. Second, I found that civilian signaling had little effect. In these cases, soldiers did not trust the statements of civilian leaders. Third, my research revealed that countercultural subcultures may increase the likelihood that units will participate in war crimes. These countercultural subcultures seem to have the greatest effect when junior leaders support them or when junior leaders cannot control the unit. In this case, junior leaders efforts to impose control fuel the in-group-out-group dynamic that strengthens the subculture

Epidemiological features and ways of improving prevention of acute respiratory viral infections

Acute respiratory viral infections for many years remain relevant problems of the health care system